Start Up. Scale Up. Sell Up.
For tradies who want to make more profit
and fast-track freedom
Start Up. Scale Up. Sell Up.
For tradies who want to make more profit
and fast-track freedom
The purpose of Start Up, Scale Up, Sell Up is straightforward: to provide you with the exact steps to build a profitable trade business by addressing the problems you’re facing — keeping up with technology, charging the right hourly rate, managing your cash flow, marketing, customer retention, and chasing debt. Written by Andy and Angela Smith, fellow trade business owners and co-founders of Lifestyle Tradie, this must-have book captures trade-specific strategies that work.
Why 90 per cent of tradies are struggling in some way
Every tradie is a control freak (and it’s holding you back)
Major challenges when starting up, scaling up or selling up
Truth bombs for every tradie
How the right business model is your key to freedom
Five tactics to power up your profits
Steps to transform your business without reinventing the wheel
Since 2000, Andy and Angela Smith have owned and operated a trade business. This husband-and-wife team has walked in your shoes. They’ve experienced the chaos, the crazy-long hours, the leaking money bucket, and the crippling stress. With $188,000 outstanding at one point, Andy dug his heels in, vowing to work harder and longer to solve the problem. It’s all he knew.
Even though his heart was in the right place, it was a soul-destroying situation and it took a heavy toll on the couple’s marriage. The same-old methods just weren’t working anymore. Thinking outside of the toolbox, Andy and Angela invested in their education and applied new knowledge to transform their trade business into a profitable and systemised enterprise in just 18 months.
Ultimately, Andy got off the tools. Now, it’s Andy and Ange’s mission to have a positive impact on your life and the trade industry as a whole.
With the help of Andy and Ange, we redesigned our business model and have completely turned our business around. In the past couple of years, our revenue has increased by 279 per cent and we have tripled our profit. Lifestyle Tradie has introduced us to a world of “working smarter, not harder”. We are back to loving our business, customers and newfound freedom. We can’t thank Lifestyle Tradie enough!
In just 3.5 years, we’re on track to turnover $5.5 million. We’ve got 20 technicians and 17 trucks on the road in Adelaide and Perth. We haven’t even begun yet, to be honest. Lifestyle Tradie has helped shift my mindset to be more systems orientated. It’s not about just smashing a job out, it’s about having structure around everything we do. Systems have given us the freedom to focus on the big picture, without spending time on the small nitty-gritty things.
Lifestyle Tradie and Andy and Ange taught us the right technology and systems to implement into our business, which has totally changed our world. We now have control of every job, which has allowed for better visibility on important measurement data like profit/loss and job/quote conversion. Now, we’re able to go on holidays knowing the business can continue to operate without us. We’re not working around the clock like we used to.